


He's My Brother

by AngeNoir



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Family, Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4264614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tadashi knows Aunt Cass tries. He also knows that Hiro has some type of prejudice against science, which makes no sense at all. Science was Hiro's favorite thing, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He's My Brother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twilightquill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightquill/gifts).



> I'm almost positive this isn't what you meant but I really liked the idea of studying how Tadashi would grow up around a genius, and how Tadashi dealt with his younger brother.

Tadashi was twelve when he first learned what it meant to be called a ‘man,’ when their Aunt Cass knelt down next to him and ruffled Hiro’s hair before looking him dead in the eye. “I know it’s not fair, little man,” she said quietly, “but you and I gotta look out for Hiro now. You help me and I’ll do my best to help the two of you. Deal?”

He looked at her, and then at Hiro, whose eyes seemed too big for his face, wet and shining. Then he took a deep breath and nodded. “Deal,” he murmured.

***

Aunt Cass did her best. She was running the café her mother, their grandmother, had left to them. Dad had felt guilty leaving it to his sister, but she had wanted it – and he’d wanted to do something else in his life. He liked building, creating, he’d loved to make little toys and games, and Hiro had spent endless days in their father’s workshop, staring in curiosity and wonder. Tadashi would come home from sixth grade and find out that his father and Hiro had built a better robot, a better scooter. At the time, Tadashi had been envious, even knowing that Hiro missed him fiercely when he was at school.

But because Aunt Cass was still trying to run the café, Hiro suddenly was without the constant adult presence he was used to. He spent his days staring out their new bedroom’s window, waiting for the bus and Tadashi. He rarely spoke now – he, who used to be a chatterbox that rarely shut up. Tadashi found himself missing Hiro’s incessant questions. He didn’t know how to get Hiro to start talking again, how to get Hiro to stop haunting the corners and hiding away in their bedroom.

When he came back with his eighth grade algebra textbooks and spread out his homework on his bed, Hiro snuck up to the edge of the bed and peered over.

“Hey, Hiro,” he said, patting the bed.

Hiro regarded him solemnly and then slowly climbed up onto the bed next to him.

“I like this class,” Tadashi began, trying to connect to his seven-year-old brother somehow. “The teacher’s really nice. And it’s not that hard. It gets easier with practice for me.”

Hiro studied the open book next to Tadashi’s notebook.

“It’s kinda a puzzle, see? Like you and dad would do, with the gears and stuff. You gotta find out which number fits in the—”

“Two.”

Tadashi paused and looked at Hiro.

“Two goes there,” Hiro repeated, and pointed to the first practice question.

Slowly, Tadashi nodded. “That’s right, Hiro. That’s right.”

And that was how Tadashi realized Hiro was going to outstrip him one day, and oddly enough, the thought didn’t bother him in the least.

***

Aunt Cass still tried her best, all throughout the years as Hiro got older and Tadashi moved through middle school and then high school. She bought Hiro lots of books, all the electronic components he wanted. She tried to get Hiro engaged in doing science fair, academic competitions, international competitions – because Tadashi might be in eleventh grade, but Hiro, for all he was eleven, was in ninth grade, jumping over kindergarten, first, _and_ second grade,  and Aunt Cass wanted him to have more socializing experiences. Hiro, however, would have nothing to do with it. Tadashi suspected it had to do with the fact that Hiro, being so young around his classmates, had decided to become cool by divorcing himself from what he termed ‘nerd stuff.’

On the other hand, Tadashi had participated eagerly in every science fair and science symposium he could. He went to lectures at SFTI, the college twenty minutes away, and listened to Callaghan himself speak. He loved to code computers and spent a lot of time online, chatting as he taught himself how to create an app about a tiny ninja that was learning to throw ninja stars at moving targets, slowly upgrading to fight in a clan battle. He and Hiro sniped at one another, sometimes throwing stuffed animals back and forth, but when it came down to it, Tadashi couldn’t stop feeling protective of his little brother. Aunt Cass always worried she wasn’t enough, always tried to find them friends or adult male figures to do things with them. She was their biggest cheerleader, but it was hard for her to split time between them and her café.

So Tadashi stuck by Hiro, being the little guy’s reality check and enabler. He never resented seeing his shrimpy brother in the same halls, went to bat for his brother against the bullies in the school, and had no problem searching his brother out between classes to give him a nudge and a pat on the back. Hiro got lost, sometimes, knowing he was on level with his peers but physically and even mentally – emotions-wise – was quite a few steps behind. Tadashi never wanted Hiro to feel like he was on his own, and sometimes he would take Hiro out of his last period or second-to-last period to just walk down the pier, or down Main Street. Go see a baseball game, go see a soccer game, the latest action movie in the theaters. They would kick back and talk about projects, about ideas, Tadashi discussing the possibilities of creating a fully functioning artificial intelligence, challenged by Hiro’s stout belief that robotics was beautifully streamlined without trying to throw in the messy wetworks of intelligence in the systems.

“You’re asking for problems,” Hiro would say, lower body on his bed and upper body hanging down, head touching the ground as Tadashi worked on his homework. “You try and program any type of system to handle the sheer amount of interactions humans do and you’re going to need so much processing power it’ll have to be the size of a building to hold all those servers.”

“It could be a _learning_ system,” Tadashi would argue back.

Hiro would roll his eyes and flop over to pull out his latest invention, a tiny robot Hiro had built in a frenzy of engineering after devouring book after book written by Robert Callaghan, the biggest name in robotics at the moment.

Hiro was also dismissive of everything Tadashi did, and when Tadashi graduated and made the decision to attend San Fransokyo Tech Institute, he and Hiro had their first big fight since their parents had died all those years ago.

“You’re going to _college_?!”

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised, Hiro,” Tadashi said, frowning slightly. “I graduated high school _literally_ last week.”

Hiro flopped down dramatically on the bed. “Yeah, but you could you to SFU, not the tech institute!”

“Why?” Tadashi asked. “What’s wrong with SFTI? I loved all the lectures I went to, I did my dual credit there – I mean, you liked reading my notes from those lectures, too!”

“Yeah, but you could go to a _real_ college, not a _tech institute._ Not – not a _nerd_ school!”

Tadashi put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes at his brother. “ _You_ are a nerd. You are all set to graduate from school at the grand old age of fourteen!”

Hiro sat up, scowling fiercely at Tadashi, folding skinny arms belligerently. “But I’m not going to be some stupid _nerd_ who goes to the tech institute!”

Tadashi let out a breath and spread his hands out, looking expectantly at Hiro.

“What?!”

“I’m not asking _you_ to go!” Tadashi pointed out.

“Yeah, but now everyone’s gonna know my brother is going to the _nerd_ school!” Hiro said.

Tadashi was eighteen, ready to take offense and smother Hiro with Hiro’s own pillow – but he’d been watching over his brother for the past six years, and he could hear the whine, the fear, the anger in Hiro’s voice. Of those emotions, he could only guess at the motivations behind one of them.

So he let out a sigh and went over to his part of the room. “I don’t know what’s got you in a snit, but you’re not talking sense at all.”

Hiro let out an outraged squawk.

The next morning, Hiro refused to speak to Tadashi. That had never happened – when they were mad at each other, they yelled, they threw things, they stomped until Aunt Cass was hollering up the stairs at them to get their act together. Hiro going silent both made Tadashi nervous and upset.

Why would this matter to Hiro? Why was Hiro so dead set against Tadashi going to the tech institute? Tadashi knew, in an abstract way, that tech institutes were seen as soft schools, not well-rounded in the least. But _why would that matter to Hiro_?

In the end, he never really got an answer. It bugged him, constantly, rubbing him the wrong way, making him constantly question why Hiro had always hated being associated with the sciences in school. For a while, he had even tried to tail the few kids Hiro hung out with, trying to see if they were making fun of the talents Hiro had naturally, deriding what Hiro had a passion for, poisoning Hiro against science in general. That had been both creepy, awkward, and unrewarding. So he had to resign himself to the fact that, after two and a half days, Hiro started talking to him again, but Hiro never visited the campus, never talked about Tadashi’s classes, would even physically leave the room if Tadashi tried to talk about what he was doing in his classes.

Since Tadashi couldn’t talk to _Hiro_ about his classes and his classmates and his lab partners, he ended up talking to his classmates and his lab partners _about_ Hiro.

***

“Ah, man, Hiro would love that,” Tadashi mused, watching Gogo explain the science behind her concept of electro-magnets and the concept of bicycles and speed. As juniors starting this independent study with Professor Callaghan, they met every month to talk about their chosen scientific concept and design.

Wasabi sighed. “Man, are we _ever_ going to meet your brother?”

With a huff, Tadashi rolled his shoulders, fiddling with his pen against his pad of paper. “I dunno, man. He graduated last spring, and he’s been moping around the house all summer. Maybe I can convince him to stop by, get him to look past whatever concept he already has in his mind…”

Professor Callaghan cleared his throat.

Wasabi and Tadashi looked up guiltily.

“If you could be respectful of your fellow classmates?” Professor Callaghan said dryly.

“Yeah, Java,” Gogo said pointedly. “Stop corrupting Wasabi with your bad habits.”

Tadashi resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her and redirected his attention to the discussion happening around him.

***

Watching Hiro step into the lab – from the corner of his eyes, because he didn’t want to dissuade Hiro from taking actual interest. He’d managed to finagle this merging of Hiro and his lab, and he knew his brother. Hiro loved technological puzzles, and his lab partners were almost done bringing their designs to life. Hiro would go _nuts_ over this.

Hearing Hiro rhapsodize over the lab, later, and decide he was _getting_ into the school, made Tadashi’s night. He was never more proud and more excited to see Hiro’s excitement, Hiro’s joy.

He couldn’t wait to have Hiro as a classmate.


End file.
